Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s dominant efficiency on the 2025 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift was nothing wanting spectacular. Followers and audiences couldn’t look away, and finally she was topped the primary French girl to win the yellow jersey. Her decisive and punishing assaults within the Alps, significantly on the Col de la Madeleine, had been shows of uncooked energy and ability that secured her place in biking historical past.
Nevertheless, regardless of her beyond-impressive win, a lot of the dialog has targeted not on the brilliance of her using however quite on the burden she misplaced in preparation for the race. Ferrand-Prévot brazenly mentioned shedding 4 kilograms (nearly 9 kilos) between Paris-Roubaix and the Tour de France Femmes as a strategic transfer geared toward optimizing her power-to-weight ratio for the demanding climbs of the Tour.
Regardless of skilled biking’s lengthy and entrenched historical past of consuming problems, she defended her method, emphasizing that her weight reduction was “managed and clever,” and executed with the assist of a group nutritionist and chef. She additionally careworn the significance of reaching her lifetime objective of successful the Tour and doing her job as an expert athlete to one of the best of her capacity, telling the media that she deliberate to regain some weight after the occasion.
With utmost respect to Ferrand-Prévot’s professionalism and the alternatives she made along with her assist group, this example reignites a vital, and infrequently delicate, dialogue inside ladies’s professional biking: the stress to be lean and the potential dangers related to aggressive weight reduction.
Demi Vollering, a earlier winner of Tour de France Femmes who got here in second after Ferrand-Prévot in 2025, has notably pushed again in opposition to the game’s weightloss narrative, publicly stating that “shedding pounds is just not the last word resolution” for efficiency. She expressed hope that her instance would present younger women that being “tremendous skinny” isn’t a prerequisite for successful a race just like the Tour.
The fact is that weight reduction for elite efficiency in a demanding sport like professional biking is a nuanced and sophisticated problem. The next power-to-weight ratio is undeniably useful, particularly for climbers.
Nevertheless, the pursuit of leanness can shortly and simply change into a harmful tightrope stroll for feminine athletes, growing the chance of low power availability and a bunch of dangerous results on well being and efficiency, together with hormonal disruptions, bone density loss, and decreased immune system resilience. These results can and infrequently do have long-lasting penalties. It’s additionally inconceivable to disregard the elevated threat {many professional} cyclists face of creating consuming problems.
Whereas Ferrand-Prévot labored with medical professionals throughout her weight reduction and consciously plans to regain weight, the general public dialogue surrounding her weight reduction, even when offered as managed, inevitably contributes to the broader narrative that successful, significantly within the mountains, requires a sure physique. This may be particularly difficult for youthful athletes or anybody emulating the professionals who could not have entry to the identical stage {of professional} steerage, training, and assist.
Maybe the dialog ought to shift from “how a lot weight did she lose?” to “how can we foster a tradition that helps optimum fueling and wholesome physique pictures whereas nonetheless striving for peak efficiency?” Vollering and others try to shift this narrative, selling accounts like @f.e.e.d_powr to interrupt the taboo surrounding the clear dialogue of weight and efficiency.
It’s important that the achievements of athletes like Pauline Ferrand-Prévot are celebrated for his or her unimaginable expertise and athletic achievements. But it surely’s additionally simply as important that discussions round weight are framed responsibly utilizing sound info backed by present science whereas emphasizing the well being and variety of robust, succesful our bodies throughout the peloton. We are able to do each of these items on the identical time, and the elemental well being of our sport, and the athletes who make it their livelihood, is dependent upon it.
When you or somebody you recognize is battling an consuming dysfunction, assist and assist is on the market by way of the Nationwide Alliance for Consuming Issues Helpline by calling 1-866-662-1235.
